Part 15 (1/2)
”Yes, do you know their convent?”
And as Durtal shook his head, the abbe continued,--
”It is older, but less interesting than that in the Rue Monsieur, the chapel is mean, full of plaster statuettes, cotton flowers, bunches of grapes and ears of corn in gold paper, but the old building of the nunnery is curious. It contains, what shall I call it? a school dining-room, and a retreatant's drawing-room, and so gives at once the impression of old age and childhood.”
”I know that cla.s.s of convents,” said Durtal. ”I used often to see one, when I used to visit an old aunt at Versailles. It always used to impress me as a Maison Vauquer, brought to devotional uses, it had the air at once of a _table d'hote_ in the Rue de la Clef and the sacristy of a country church.”
”Just so,” and the abbe went on with a smile,--
”I had many interviews with the abbess in the Rue Tournefort; you guess at rather than see her, for you are separated from her by a screen of black wood, behind which is stretched a black curtain which she draws aside.”
”I can see it,” thought Durtal, who, remembering the Benedictine custom, saw in a second a little face confused in neutral tinted light, and lower, at the top of her habit, the gleam of a medal of the Blessed Sacrament in red enamelled in white.
He laughed and said to the abbe,--
”I laugh, because having had some business to transact with my nun aunt of whom I was speaking, only visible like your abbess through a trellis, I found out how to read her thoughts a little.”
”Ah! how was that?”
”In this way. Since I could not see her face, which was hidden behind the lattice of her cage, and disappeared behind her veil, and if she should answer me, having nothing to guide me but the inflexions of her voice, always circ.u.mspect and always calm, I ended by trusting only to her great gla.s.ses, round, with buff frames, which almost all nuns wear.
Well, all the repressed vivacity of this woman burst out there; suddenly in a corner of her gla.s.ses, there was a glimmer, and I then understood that her eye had lighted up, and gave the lie to the indifference of her voice, the determined quietness of her tone.”
The abbe in his turn began to laugh.
”Do you know the Superior of the Benedictines, in the Rue Monsieur?”
said Durtal.
”I have spoken with her once or twice; there the parlour is monastic, there is not the provincial and middle-cla.s.s side of the Rue Tournefort, it is composed of a sombre room, of which all the breadth at the end is taken up by an iron grating, and behind the grating are again wooden bars, and a shutter painted black. You are quite in the dark, and the abbess, scarcely in the light, appears to you like a phantom.”
”The abbess is, I suppose, the nun, elderly, fragile and very short, to whom Dom Etienne committed the novice?”
”Yes. She is a remarkable shepherdess of souls, and what is more, a very well educated woman of most distinguished manners.”
”Oh,” thought Durtal: ”I can imagine that these abbesses are charming, but also terrible women. Saint Teresa was goodness itself, but when she speaks in her 'Way of Perfection' of nuns who band themselves together to discuss the will of their mother, she shows herself inexorable, for she declares that perpetual imprisonment should be inflicted on them as soon as possible and without flinching, and in fact she is right, for every disorderly sister infects the flock, and gives the rot to souls.”
Thus talking they had reached the end of the Rue de Sevres, and the abbe stopped to rest.
”Ah,” he said, as if speaking to himself, ”had I not had all my life heavy expenses, first a brother, then nephews to maintain, I should many years ago have become a member of Saint Benedict's family. I have always had an attraction towards that grand Order, which is, in fact, the intellectual Order of the Church. Therefore, when I was stronger and younger, I always went for my retreats to one of their monasteries, sometimes to the black monks of Solesmes, or of Liguge, who have preserved the wise traditions of Saint Maurus, sometimes to the Cistercians, or the white monks of La Trappe.”
”True,” said Durtal, ”La Trappe is one of the great branches of the tree of Saint Benedict, but how is it that its ordinances do not differ from those which the Patriarch left?”
”That is to say that the Trappists interpret the rule of Saint Benedict, which is very broad and supple, less in its spirit than in its letter, while the Benedictines do the contrary.
”In fact, La Trappe is an offshoot of Citeaux, and is much more the daughter of Saint Bernard, who was during forty years the very sap of that branch, than the descendant of Saint Benedict.”
”But, so far as I remember, the Trappists are themselves divided, and do not live under a uniform discipline.”
”They do so now, since a pontifical brief dated March 17th, 1893, sanctioned the decisions of the general Chapter of the Trappists a.s.sembled in Rome, and ordered the fusion into one sole order, and under the direction of a sole superior, of the three observances of the Trappists, who were in fact ruled by discordant const.i.tutions.”